Senators clashed yesterday over whether visitors at Westgate Correctional Facility are being checked for drugs with an ion scanning machine.

Opposition Senator Kenneth Bascome two weeks ago said the scanning machine was broken at the prison because he had visited the previous day and asked to be scanned. Sen. Bascome said Labour and Home Affairs Minister Randolph Horton was praising the prison and its achievements in the House of Assembly ? including the success of the scanning machine ? on the same day he highlighted in Senate the machine wasn?t working.

Yet Sen. Bascome said he visited the prison the day before Mr. Horton spoke in the House and the scanner was broken then. He said he knew this to be true because he asked to be scanned before entering Westgate ? and always did because he didn?t want drugs planted on him ? and found out the scanner wasn?t working.

But Government Senate leader and Attorney General Larry Mussenden insisted that although a larger scanner was broken, a second smaller machine was working on the day Sen. Bascome visited.

The clash came as Senators debated the budget spending for the Prison Service. Junior Labour and Home Affairs Minister Sen. Reginald Burrows said the prison service had many successes, including the ion scanners, which had detected 118 out of 1,500 visitors who had had contact with drugs.

Sen. Bascome said: ?The same day that I spoke to the issue, the Minister on the floor of the House was saying that the scan was in operation and was responsible for X number of people being scanned and X number of people being turned away.

?And it was impossible for that machine to be working at that time because I was at Westgate the day before and I am insistent that I am scanned when I go.?

Sen. Mussenden responded: ?The day he referred to there was an ion scan working at that time.?

There were two scanners at Westgate and the smaller one was working on the day Sen. Bascome visited, he said. He asked why Sen. Bascome was complaining about one scanner being broken when he should be giving Government and the Prison Service credit for all the drugs the machines had detected. Sen. Bascome also said Connie Black, who runs an alternative substance abuse service at Westgate, was in dispute with management at Westgate because she couldn?t get enough hours for her programmes. He said Prison Commissioner John Prescod was at Westgate ten days ago trying to sort out the problem, yet there was no mention of this in the ?glowing? picture of the Prisons presented by Government yesterday in the Budget debate.

And he said the Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) programme should be starting with young people first rather than adults. He asked why Government didn?t put its own philosophy and ensure officers? problems were resolved so prisoners could get the best service.

?I don?t see the cohesiveness you (Sen. Burrows) read out (in your Budget statement) this afternoon,? said Sen. Bascome.

?I am not saying the problems are the Commissioner?s fault or the officers? fault, but there are a number of issues that are outstanding.

?And if you allow issues to fester, how do you expect officers to put their best foot forward?? Sen. Mussenden retorted that Bermuda?s ATI programmes were praised by a visiting English judge as better than anything in England, Wales or any overseas territory at a recent conference.

?The judge told me that if he could be a judge anywhere that had ATI it would be Bermuda because we have all the options. We are on the leading edge,? he said.